5,000 metres, Men

The distance skater to beat in the 1998 season was Gianni Romme. Not only had he beaten Johann Olav Koss’s world record, set in the 1994 Olympics, he had also won two of the three World Cup races that year, the third one being won by Kjell Storelid, runner-up in 1994. In Nagano, Romme was mostly expected to battle his own teammates (Rintje Ritsma and Bob De Jong), and his former compatriot, Bart Veldkamp.

Veldkamp was the first of the favorites to skate. Olympic Champion for the Netherlands in 1992, he had assumed Belgian nationality to avoid the tough Dutch selection races and automatically qualify for international competition. In Nagano, Veldkamp broke Romme’s world record, becoming the first person to go below 6:30 with 6:28.31. The next pair included the reigning World Champion, Rintje Ritsma. He started out faster than Veldkamp, gaining more than a second, but lost ground towards the end, finishing with only 0.07 seconds left on the Belgian.

Ritsma’s time was still on top as the final pair with Romme and Storelid got underway. Romme set out with an insane pace, having a 2-seconds lead on Ritsma after only 1,000 m. Romme managed to keep up the pace, and eventually outraced Ritsma by a full six seconds, eight seconds below his own former best, shattering the previous world record. Just a month later, Romme would again shave off 8 tenths from his mark at the World Single Distance Championships in Calgary.